The end of 2017 also saw the end of an era in the close of my time as a stay-at-home mom.
I went back to work full-time in October and life has been in a state of perpetual motion ever since.
Early last year my husband became ill and we made some decisions to restructure our lives a bit. I haven’t written much about it because he’s immensely private, which is really rather unfortunate for him on account of how my whole job is writing stories about our lives for books, and magazines, and the internet at large. Clearly, we are soulmates ????
I took a position on an inbound marketing team at a company here and handed the homeschooling reins to J. So now he is staying home with the kids while I tell stories in a variety of formats.
I shared about this big shift in our lives in my weekly email newsletter (which if you don’t get, you should totally sign up for here) and many of you wanted to know how I was finding the transition between staying at home and going back to work.
Well.
The other day I inadvertently called a co-worker “babe,” if that is any indication for you.
And then, when attempting to reference another co-worker, I referred to them as Mike Wyzowksi who is, in fact, not a person that I work with so much as an animated character from the movie Monster’s Inc.
Obviously, I need to get used to spending all of my time with adults rather than toddlers.
Then, there was The Incident.
On my third week of work, I was walking briskly along a corridor between cubicles and feeling very good about the fact that I was no longer getting lost at every turn. The only problem, tiny thing really, is that I am incredibly short. Which means that you can not actually see me over the tops of said cubicles. I did not take this detail into account on my jaunty little stroll.
And that is the story of how just as I neared the end of the corridor a man rounded the corner in an equally jaunty fashion and collided with me, knocking me over and sending everything I was carrying crashing to the floor.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
The worst part was that an entire cup of coffee became dislodged from its container and the contents rained down on me like a caramel latte waterfall.
(This is why you should stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to.)
I was completely, utterly drenched, with coffee saturating my hair and soaking into my crisp, white sweater. It was like a scene straight out of a romantic comedy, except for that whole thing where the guy and the girl eventually fall for each other after some shenanigans involving a misunderstanding that could have been cleared up with a simple conversation, he turns out to be a billionaire, and she lives blissfully ever after.
I did not live blissfully ever after.
I spent the next twenty minutes in the bathroom washing my hair and shirt in the sink and attempting to dry them by standing under the hand dryer and frantically pressing the button every ten seconds. (It was a valiant but futile effort.)
It was, however, the closest I’ll ever come to my dream of starring in a Hallmark Holiday Movie. The plot was totally on point.
Coffee collateral damage aside, I do really love my new job and am so grateful to have landed somewhere that I enjoy so much.
In the margins, I’ve been writing –devotionals and bible studies and magazine columns that are making my wildest writing dreams come true. All of the twilight hours have been studiously spent embarking on new adventures, like my newest book that I’m thrilled to share with you later this week.
And that is how 2017 looked, putting pieces of our lives together in new ways that will complement our family the best.
(Ridley was unimpressed with family photos.)
So it felt only fitting to bring a fresh new look to this space, as we usher in 2018.
Last year we planted all of the seeds for our family’s life changes and we tended and we toiled and this new year has us poised to watch them bloom.
